The New York City Police Department’s latest attempt to fire Adrian Schoolcraft, the whistleblower who secretly recorded evidence of corruption among his superiors over three years ago, was blocked this week in federal court.

Schoolcraft has said he began wearing a microphone to defend
himself against citizens’ allegations that he used racial slurs
while policing the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, a poor and
primarily African-American section of Brooklyn. By wearing the
device from June 1, 2008 until October 15, 2009, though, he soon
began recording directions from NYPD higher-ups who pressured
officers to fill monthly arrest quotas, which is illegal.

“He wants three seat belt [summonses], one cell phone, and 11
others,” one police sergeant is heard saying on the tape.
“I don’t know what the number is, but that’s what [an
executive officer] wants.”

Upon complaining of corrupt policies and wrongful arrests,
Schoolcraft has said, he began receiving threats from fellow
police officers and was eventually reassigned to a desk
job.

Three weeks after he told the NYPD the damning recordings
existed, Schoolcraft’s home was raided by a large group of
officers who forcibly checked him into a psychiatric ward in
Queens citing suicidal tendencies. Approximately twelve of
Schoolcraft’s superiors were on hand at his home. Reportedly
among them was Paul Browne, a top aide to Commissioner Ray Kelly,
whose presence would indicate Kelly knew of and approved of the
raid.

After Schoolcraft refused treatment, the officers guarding him at
a Queens hospital handcuffed him to a bed and prevented him from
using a telephone. He was held there for three days until his
father tracked him down and signed him out. The Schoolcraft
family later received a bill for $7,185 for his stay at the
facility.

Schoolcraft eventually turned over his recordings, including of
the night when he was dragged to the hospital, to the Village
Voice, which dubbed the audio “The NYPD Tapes.” In 2009 and 2010,
the NYPD charged Schoolcraft with approximately two dozen charges
of leaving work early, failing to respond to department
summonses, failure to obey an order, being away without leave,
and others.

The department could have tried and fired Schoolcraft in early
2010, the Voice reported, but presumably suspended him instead
because of the bad publicity that would come as a natural result
of dismissing a man for exposing corruption.

“I think within the precinct, he was probably seen as a little
bit eccentric,” Graham Rayman, a reporter for the Village
Voice, told This American Life in 2010. “And also, he wasn’t
going with the program. And anyone who doesn’t go with the
program is automatically marked.”

For nearly four years he has been on leave without pay, waiting
for the start of a federal lawsuit he filed against the
department for intimidation and retaliation.

In response, the NYPD filed its own administrative suit seeking
to fire Schoolcraft, a move Schoolcraft’s lawyers said will
unduly influence the verdict in the original suit. The department
was blocked from filing that suit this week.

“You have the power to arrest, to take away someone’s liberty.
You have the power and the authority to use force and sometimes
deadly force,” Kelly said this week in a speech to this
year's graduating class of the NYPD academy. “Now these are
awesome powers.”

The commissioner, quoted by CBS, also said that different ethnic
groups are “not always happy” with the department and that
“all it takes is one errant police officer” to undermine
the “great institution” that has been built by
generations.